The present invention relates to methods and systems for parsing text. In particular, the present invention relates to semantic parsing of text.
Nearly all modern computer interfaces are based on computer driven interactions in which the user must follow an execution flow set by the computer or learn one or more commands exposed by the computer. In other words, most computer interfaces do not adapt to the manner in which the user wishes to interact with the computer, but instead force the user to interact through a specific set of interfaces.
New research, however, has focused on the idea of having a computer/user interface that is based on a dialogue metaphor in which both the user and the computer system can lead or follow the dialogue. Under this metaphor, the user can provide an initial question or command and the computer system can then identify ambiguity in the question or command and ask refining questions to identify a proper course of action.
Note that during the refinement, the user is free to change the dialogue and lead it into a new direction. Thus, the computer system must be adaptive and react to these changes in the dialogue.
The performance of such systems is dependent on the system's ability to quickly determine the user's goal. The longer it takes the system to understand the user's goal, the more frustrating it is for the user.
One obstacle to quickly understanding the user's goal is the richness of human language, which can cause strings of text to be associated with a large number of different semantic tags. This makes it difficult to identify the goal of the user because often there will be ambiguity about the semantic meaning of what the user has said. Thus, improvements are needed in dialogue systems to reduce the ambiguity associated with performing semantic parses of text, especially speech-based text.